Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (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 a lot (more or less 1567%) more effective at texture 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.