Radeon HD 4350 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4550 256MB should theoretically 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 will be just a bit (approximately 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

The Radeon HD 4550 256MB is a bit (about 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4350, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.