GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (340%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 870M should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (more or less 2096%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100592 (2096%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20184 (841%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.