GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which has a clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 850M should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be much (about 298%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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 high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.