GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 820M is 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 820M is quite a bit (approximately 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2704 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1524 (53%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.