Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is quite a bit (about 118%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB will be a lot (more or less 45%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (45%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.