GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory works at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a lot (about 255%) better 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 using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.