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Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 230400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 217600 (1700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be a lot (about 582%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550 8800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 51200 (582%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550 4400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 19600 (445%)

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

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4870 X2 Radeon HD 5550
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Aug 12, 2008 February 9, 2010
Code Name R700 Redwood LE
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 512 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz (x2) 550 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz (x2) 800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 350 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 230400 MB/sec 12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 60000 Mtexels/sec 8800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 24000 Mpixels/sec 4400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 16
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 8
Bus Type GDDR5 DDR2
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 128-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 627 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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