GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131392 (1027%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be much (approximately 791%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69600 (791%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (more or less 435%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19120 (435%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.