Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all that 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 makes use of a 14 nm design. It 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 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 550, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 51136 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 will be a lot (more or less 41%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is much (about 76%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (76%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.