GeForce GT 640 DDR3 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44224 (346%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should be quite a bit (approximately 227%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (227%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (227%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.