GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (776%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 is 1088% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 139200 (1088%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be much (more or less 815%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39120 (815%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26880 (1120%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.