GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5550, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179584 (1403%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much (approximately 461%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40608 (461%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32656 (742%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.