Radeon RX 480 4GB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 550, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 512 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 is 100% quicker than the Radeon RX 550 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a lot (about 358%) faster with regards to 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

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a lot (about 104%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 550, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.