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Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB comes with clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB 25 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB 106 Watts
Difference: 81 Watts (324%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB 57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be much (about 158%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB 12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB 4800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 7600 (158%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB 12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB 2400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10000 (417%)

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

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Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3870 512MB Radeon HD 4550 512MB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 Sep 30, 2008
Code Name RV670 XT RV710
Memory 512 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 775 MHz 600 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 1600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 106 watts 25 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 12400 Mtexels/sec 4800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12400 Mpixels/sec 2400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) 80(16x5)
Texture Mapping Units 16 8
Render Output Units 16 4
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 64-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 55 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 242 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 processed per second.

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

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4550 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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