GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should be 650% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is a lot (approximately 115%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14560 (331%)

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 (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 card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.