Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which has a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4650 512MB is 25% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4650 512MB should be much (about 300%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4650 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (100%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.