GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 950M should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is much (approximately 315%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27760 (315%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be quite a bit (approximately 232%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10224 (232%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.