GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 430 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 27%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is superior to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (57%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.