GeForce 840M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which has a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 840M should be 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 840M		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 840M should be much (about 181%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 840M		24696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15896 (181%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 840M will be a lot (about 87%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 840M		8232 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3832 (87%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.