Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 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 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 83 Watts (332%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be a lot (more or less 650%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (650%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is much (about 500%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (500%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.