Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory perform a lot faster 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 will be a lot (about 675%) faster with regards to AF 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

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (more or less 933%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.