Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory is set to run at a speed of 400 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4670 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be a lot (approximately 173%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (173%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (36%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.