GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 320 is 98% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12480 (98%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 is a lot (about 170%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (170%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 should be quite a bit (approximately 80%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.