GeForce GT 130 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which comes with a clock speed of 600 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 130		75 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4550 256MB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GT 130 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 130		12000 MB/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 130 will be much (more or less 150%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 130		12000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (150%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 130 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 130		8000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (233%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a 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. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.