GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB will be much (about 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 33%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (33%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 get to the max fill rate.