Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which has GPU core speed of 950 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is quite a bit (approximately 4967%) better at 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 is quite a bit (about 2433%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.