Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is quite a bit (about 309%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27200 (309%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (227%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.