GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should be much (approximately 83%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 will be a lot (more or less 83%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (83%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.