Radeon HD 4350 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4550 256MB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4350 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 256MB is a small bit (about 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4550 256MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4350, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100 (4%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.