GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M should be 900% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (more or less 1032%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90848 (1032%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 62032 (1410%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.