GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with core clock 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 should be 1025% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (1025%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 will be a lot (more or less 366%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		40992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32192 (366%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24880 (565%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.