Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 550, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 244 Watts (488%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 123% faster than the Radeon RX 550 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 141312 (123%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (approximately 559%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 196800 (559%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (427%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.