GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (460%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131392 (1027%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (approximately 1533%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (1533%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (approximately 880%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21120 (880%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.