GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 will be 4% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (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 using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a better choice, by far. (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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.