Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (600%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 1100% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (more or less 1567%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (1567%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (more or less 1233%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.