GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 4550 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 310 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4550 256MB should be a little bit (about 2%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4550 256MB is superior to the GeForce GT 310, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44 (2%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.