GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which has a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179584 (1403%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 461%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40608 (461%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (approximately 742%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32656 (742%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.