Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has clock speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform quite a bit 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 much (approximately 1047%) faster with regards to 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 running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per 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 worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.