GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. 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 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (876%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179584 (1403%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (about 929%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44608 (929%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (about 1444%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34656 (1444%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.