GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (760%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121120 (946%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is much (more or less 608%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29192 (608%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is quite a bit (about 912%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21880 (912%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.