GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which has clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 should be much (about 83%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 will be a lot (more or less 83%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (83%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many 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.