GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a speed of 400 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (325%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 should be a lot (more or less 100%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (100%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.