GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which features GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4790 is 4% faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its higher 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 should be a lot (more or less 50%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 4790, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.