Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 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 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 1660%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79680 (1660%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25760 (1073%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the max fill rate.