GeForce GT 130 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 130		75 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce GT 130 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 130		12000 MB/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 130 should be a lot (about 150%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 130		12000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (150%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 130 should be much (more or less 233%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GT 130		8000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (233%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.