Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 550, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 512 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 300 Watts (600%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform much faster than the Radeon RX 550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 115712 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot (approximately 70%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be quite a bit (approximately 36%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 550, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (36%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.