GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 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 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 950M should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot (approximately 662%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31760 (662%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12224 (509%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many 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.