Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which features GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 251200 (1963%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (more or less 2367%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113600 (2367%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (about 1133%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27200 (1133%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.