GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 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 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (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 a lot (approximately 450%) better 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

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be quite a bit (about 175%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.