Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which has a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7770 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (approximately 355%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (355%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.