GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which has a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 a lot (more or less 315%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is the winner, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.