GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR3 memory running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, 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 GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (760%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 is 946% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121120 (946%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (approximately 608%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29192 (608%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21880 (912%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.