GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 will be much (more or less 83%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.