GeForce GT 130 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory 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

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 130		75 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4550 512MB is 7% quicker than the GeForce GT 130 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 130		12000 MB/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 130 is quite a bit (more or less 150%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 130		12000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (150%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 130 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 130		8000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.