GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is much (about 314%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (314%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is much (approximately 373%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.