Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 550, which comes with a clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon RX 550		3507 points
	Difference: 4718 (135%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 130% faster than the Radeon RX 550 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 149312 (130%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (approximately 236%) better at AF than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83200 (236%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (approximately 68%) better at AA than the Radeon RX 550, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (68%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.