GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 34944 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a bit (about 15%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.