GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR3 memory running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (460%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131392 (1027%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (about 1533%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (1533%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21120 (880%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.