GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be 27% faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 26304 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB will be a lot (more or less 39%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be a lot (more or less 35%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (35%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.