GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be a lot (about 200%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be quite a bit (more or less 50%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.