GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which has core 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, the GeForce GTX 850M should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be much (about 298%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26240 (298%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9616 (219%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory 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 bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.