GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 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 320		43 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 320 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 should be much (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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 320 is the winner, by a large margin. (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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 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 reach the max fill rate.