GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features GPU core speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 30400 (238%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be quite a bit (more or less 62%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5456 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should be much (more or less 224%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9856 (224%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.