GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 560 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115328 (901%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be a lot (about 415%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36560 (415%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is quite a bit (more or less 489%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21520 (489%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.