GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (324%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be quite a bit (approximately 422%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20256 (422%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be much (about 422%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10128 (422%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.