GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (500%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115328 (901%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is quite a bit (more or less 845%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40560 (845%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be much (about 980%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23520 (980%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.