GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which features a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 820M will be 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 will be much (more or less 31%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 is a lot (approximately 53%) better at AA than the GeForce 820M, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 get to the maximum fill rate.