GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which has GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR3 memory running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 TAUs, 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 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (688%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (more or less 1500%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72000 (1500%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (700%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.