Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (700%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to 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 quite a bit (more or less 1367%) better at anisotropic 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 should be much (more or less 967%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 the video card could possibly write to its 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.