In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GT 550M 2GB are very slightly better than the Intel Iris Graphics 5100 Mobile.

The GT 550M has a 540 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the Graphics 5100. This results in the GT 550M providing 10.2 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GT 550M has a 540 MHz higher core clock speed than the Graphics 5100 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GT 550M providing 2.2 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Graphics 5100 was released over a year more recently than the GT 550M, and so the Graphics 5100 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GT 550M.

The GT 550M has 2048 MB video memory, but the Graphics 5100 does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The Iris Graphics 5100 Mobile has 40 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GT 550M 2GB has 96. However, the actual shader performance of the Graphics 5100 is 192 and the actual shader performance of the GT 550M is 142. The Graphics 5100 having 50 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the GT 550M performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The Graphics 5100 transistor size technology is 18 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GT 550M. This means that the Graphics 5100 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GT 550M. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the Graphics 5100 should consume less power than the GT 550M.

The Iris Graphics 5100 Mobile requires 28 Watts to run and the GeForce GT 550M 2GB requires 35 Watts. The GT 550M requires 7 Watts more than the Graphics 5100 to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GT 550M to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the Graphics 5100.