Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 160 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 will be quite a bit (approximately 76%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		5000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 will be a lot (about 76%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		2500 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1900 (76%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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