GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory is set to run at a speed of 400 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is a lot (about 200%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.