Question about Graphics Cards

What do these numbers mean and which number is important?

I am looking at the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5 and the 3.0GB DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M using NVIDIA Optimus technology

1.5 < 3 but 560 > 555

Thank you!

 

Focus on the GPU version not the VRAM.

1.5gb GTX560m beats the pants off a 3gb GT555m.

The higher VRAM is a marketing ploy. No effect on performance. Unless you are gaming at some crazy high res beyond 1920 x1200, but a GT 555m won't ever be able to play @ resolutions that high. Also, with NVIDIA cards GTX > GT. so focus on the prefix (GT/GTX) and the GPU model number GT520< GT555< GTX560< GTX570< GTX580.

 

Thank you for the timely response. That definitely helps a lot. Now I know how to better compare graphics cards of the same brand. However, what is the best way to compare, say, AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5 and NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M 2GB GDDR5? I've Googled and read some but can't seem to find what I am looking for.

Thank you in advance.

 

With AMD it is a little different they use the numbering system. so it is like this. 66xx< 67xx< 68xx< 69xx. Then it would go like this 6950m(Non existent in any system though), 6970m, and 6990m These are the three best Mobile GPU's AMD makes.

You would want to look at shader count, I.E. 6990 has 1120, 6970 has 980(I think).

For Nvidia you want to focus on their cuda core count which on a 580 I think is 448?

But the best way to compare NVIDIA and AMD GPU's is what your budget allows and the features you need. Nvidia has more features and great performance, but costs more. AMD has almost the same amount of features(some are not implemented at all though), and costs less.

The price/performance goes to the 6990, but if you want PhysX and CUDA then you will have to pay more for the 580M, but performance wise it is not a huge jump compare to the price increase from 6990m--->580m.

Also, Welcome to the forums!

 

It's a $330 difference, so I'm not sure if it's worth it. Thank you for the help and the kind welcome.

 

performance wise:

AMD 6990m ~ Nvidia 580m
AMD 6970m ~ Nvidia 570m
AMD 6950m ~ Nvidia 560m
AMD 6770m ~ Nvidia 555m
AMD 6750m ~ Nvidia 550m

Both chips support all important technologies for games. Nvidia has a few redundant proprietary technologies which only work on Nvidia chips, but aren't very common, because developers tend to avoid programming for a specific brand of hardware, and the brand-agnostic technologies have more major companies behind them.

 

CUDA is slowly going away. CUDA is NVIDIA's proprietary tech. They are eventually going to replace CUDA with Open CL which AMD supports.

Also
69xxm ~ 570/580m
6870m ~ 560m.

EDIT:
MasterChef341 put a better comparison.