Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5550, which has GPU core speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be 150% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be much (approximately 173%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (173%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (36%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.