GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with GPU core speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be a little bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 160 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (2%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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