Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. 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, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (more or less 1567%) more effective at 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, by far. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.