Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which features a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 is 950% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (more or less 282%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.