GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. 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 GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (340%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 870M should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is a lot (approximately 2096%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100592 (2096%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be much (approximately 841%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20184 (841%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 most 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 number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.