GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs 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 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 will be much (about 83%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is quite a bit (more or less 83%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (83%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.