GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all that 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 makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 880M should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M should be a lot (approximately 1288%) more effective 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 is quite a bit (about 594%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This figure 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.