GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which features core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4790 should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 3904 (4%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much (more or less 50%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be quite a bit (about 125%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (125%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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