GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) will be a lot (more or less 133%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (17%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.