GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be quite a bit (about 450%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (450%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (175%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.