GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5550, which has clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 85696 (670%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is much (approximately 227%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (227%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (391%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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 reach the maximum fill rate.