GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory works at a frequency of 400 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be much (about 200%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be a lot (approximately 50%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its 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 the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.