In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Intel HD Graphics 510 Desktop are significantly better than the AMD Radeon HD 6450.

The Radeon HD 6450 has a 275 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the Graphics 510. This results in the Radeon HD 6450 providing 2.2 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The Radeon HD 6450 has a 275 MHz higher core clock speed than the Graphics 510 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the Radeon HD 6450 providing 1.1 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Graphics 510 was released over three years more recently than the Radeon HD 6450, and so the Graphics 510 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the Radeon HD 6450 when running the latest games.

The Radeon HD 6450 has 512 MB video memory, but the Graphics 510 does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The HD Graphics 510 Desktop has 12 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 6450 has 160. However, the actual shader performance of the Graphics 510 is 101 and the actual shader performance of the Radeon HD 6450 is 50. The Graphics 510 having 51 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the Graphics 510 delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Radeon HD 6450.

The Graphics 510 transistor size technology is 26 nm (nanometers) smaller than the Radeon HD 6450. This means that the Graphics 510 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the Radeon HD 6450.

The HD Graphics 510 Desktop requires 47 Watts to run and the Radeon HD 6450 requires 18 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Graphics 510 and a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Radeon HD 6450. The Graphics 510 requires 29 Watts more than the Radeon HD 6450 to run. The difference is not significant enough for the Graphics 510 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the Radeon HD 6450.