GeForce GT 210 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be quite a bit (more or less 87%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4088 (87%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be much (more or less 87%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 210, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2044 (87%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.