Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed 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 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB will be much (about 118%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (118%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (45%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.