GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5770 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 21696 (28%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is a bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be quite a bit (approximately 59%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5770, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (59%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed per second. This number is worked out 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.