GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs 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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 880M is 900% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be much (more or less 1288%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113312 (1288%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be a lot (approximately 594%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26128 (594%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.