GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE will be 750% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (750%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is much (about 255%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (255%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (373%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.