Radeon RX 480 4GB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 550, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 512 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should be 100% faster than the Radeon RX 550 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 114688 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be a lot (more or less 358%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 126080 (358%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 4GB is superior to the Radeon RX 550, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18240 (104%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 reach the max fill rate.