Radeon HD 4550 512MB 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 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (220%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7770 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit (more or less 733%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (733%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 get to the max fill rate.