GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which has a clock speed of 600 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (876%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be 1403% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179584 (1403%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (about 929%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44608 (929%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.