Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (700%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be a lot (about 1767%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84800 (1767%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23200 (967%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends 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.