Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs 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 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 350 Watts (1400%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7990 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 563200 (4400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is much (approximately 4967%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 238400 (4967%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be a lot (more or less 2433%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 58400 (2433%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.