GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a frequency of 400 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should be a lot (more or less 282%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.