GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which features a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 is 4% faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 3904 (4%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is quite a bit (more or less 50%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be quite a bit (about 125%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (125%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.