GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 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 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (500%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (575%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is a lot (approximately 688%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33000 (688%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13800 (575%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.