GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 164608 (1286%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (more or less 377%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33200 (377%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (about 664%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (664%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.