GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 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 340		69 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (176%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 340 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (325%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be a lot (about 267%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (267%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 340 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (83%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in 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. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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.