Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 is 900% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (approximately 409%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36000 (409%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (approximately 191%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (191%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.