GeForce GT 1030 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 memory running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 1030 should be 284% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 36352 (284%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is a lot (about 360%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31680 (360%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15840 (360%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.