GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 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 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should be quite a bit (more or less 80%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is much (approximately 80%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (80%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a 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 figure is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.