GeForce 840M vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 840M		30 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 840M should be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 840M		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 840M should be quite a bit (approximately 415%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 840M		24696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19896 (415%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 840M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 840M		8232 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5832 (243%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.