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GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) has a GPU core clock speed of 540 MHz, and the 256 MB of DDR2 memory is set to run at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5550, which has 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 comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 will be a bit (about 2%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5550 8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 160 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 will be a bit (approximately 2%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550 4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 80 (2%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) Radeon HD 5550
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 February 9, 2010
Code Name G84 Redwood LE
Memory 256 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 550 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 8800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 4400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 16 16
Render Output Units 8 8
Bus Type DDR2 DDR2
Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 40 nm
Transistors 289 million 627 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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