GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5450, which features a clock speed of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (137%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5450 will be a lot (approximately 44%) better at AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5450 will be quite a bit (more or less 44%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (44%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.