GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 will be a lot (approximately 80%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (80%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 maximum fill rate.