GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which has a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features 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

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should be a lot (more or less 83%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (83%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.