GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory is set to run at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19584 (153%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is a small bit (more or less 14%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 should be a little bit (more or less 14%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (14%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.