GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 64-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 820M should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 820M will be quite a bit (approximately 140%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6704 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 820M is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 476 (20%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

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