GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is quite a bit (about 80%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) will be quite a bit (more or less 80%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.