GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 430 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB should be a lot (more or less 133%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 430 1GB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (17%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.