GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which has GPU core speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 282%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (282%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (118%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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