Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (approximately 282%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (282%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be quite a bit (about 205%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9040 (205%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.