GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB is a small bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 512MB should be a bit (about 9%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 200 (9%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.