Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7790 is 650% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be much (approximately 536%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (536%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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