GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115456 (902%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be much (about 498%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43808 (498%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21904 (498%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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