GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 465 should be 702% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 89792 (702%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 is quite a bit (more or less 204%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17908 (204%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 should be quite a bit (approximately 341%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15024 (341%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 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 number of ROPs 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.