GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 320 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12480 (98%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 will be a lot (more or less 47%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4160 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be a little bit (about 2%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface 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 memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.