Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 102 Watts (408%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (about 675%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (675%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (933%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.