Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (600%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 is 900% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (approximately 833%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (833%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (433%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.