GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (688%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 1500%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72000 (1500%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (more or less 700%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (700%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.