Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It 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 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 251200 (1963%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 2367%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113600 (2367%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.