GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It 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 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be much (about 200%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be a lot (more or less 50%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card 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 colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.