GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which features a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 160 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		31 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) is much (about 39%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		5000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) is much (about 39%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		2500 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 700 (39%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.