GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (540%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (800%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be a lot (approximately 688%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33000 (688%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (800%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.