Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which features a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 480 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB should be a lot (more or less 225%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (225%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (117%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.