Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is much (about 918%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80800 (918%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.