GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory 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)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 34944 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be a small bit (about 15%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be quite a bit (more or less 116%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result 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 AA, 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.