GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of 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 card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 will be 351% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a lot (about 185%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16256 (185%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be quite a bit (approximately 185%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8128 (185%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.