GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 is 575% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (575%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be quite a bit (approximately 330%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29000 (330%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11800 (268%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.