Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (600%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 is 1100% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (approximately 1567%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (1567%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (approximately 1233%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (1233%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.