GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5450, which comes with a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (342%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 5450 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is quite a bit (about 408%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (408%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is superior to the Radeon HD 5450, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (154%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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