Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (953%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (approximately 1254%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65200 (1254%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (about 885%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5450, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (885%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.