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GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8500 GT features a GPU core clock speed of 450 MHz, and the 512 MB of DDR2 memory runs at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 16 Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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 have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB is much (about 33%) better at AF 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 using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4550 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (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

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GeForce 8500 GT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8500 GT Radeon HD 4550 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 Sep 30, 2008
Code Name G86 RV710
Memory 512 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 450 MHz 600 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 1600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 45 watts 25 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 3600 Mtexels/sec 4800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 1800 Mpixels/sec 2400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 80(16x5)
Texture Mapping Units 8 8
Render Output Units 4 4
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR3
Bus Width 128-bit 64-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 55 nm
Transistors 210 million 242 million
Bus PCIe x16, PCI, PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8500 GT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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