GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specs 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 bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 820M should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 820M is much (more or less 31%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2704 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 is quite a bit (about 53%) better at AA than the GeForce 820M, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1524 (53%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.