GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory works at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 73216 (572%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 659%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58016 (659%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29008 (659%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.