GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 320, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12480 (98%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 is a lot (about 170%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (170%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 is quite a bit (about 80%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.