GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 310, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 256MB should be just a bit (approximately 2%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4550 256MB is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44 (2%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.