GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which has a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 773%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (773%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (more or less 336%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (336%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.