Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (420%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is quite a bit (approximately 1047%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50240 (1047%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25120 (1047%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.