GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of 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 along with 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 should be 575% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is 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 running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.