Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 550, which comes with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 512 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 512 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is a small bit (about 17%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 550 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.