GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (750%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be much (more or less 314%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (314%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (373%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.