GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be much better than 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 a lot (about 461%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 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 max fill rate.