Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 550, which features GPU clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, 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 HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 300 Watts (600%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon RX 550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 115712 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a lot (approximately 70%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot (approximately 36%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 550, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.