GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB is a lot (approximately 33%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4550 512MB is superior to the GeForce 8500 GT, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (33%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.