Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (220%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7770, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is a lot (more or less 733%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (733%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (567%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.