GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 34944 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be just a bit (approximately 15%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (116%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's 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 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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