Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (700%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (approximately 1367%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65600 (1367%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 967%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23200 (967%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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