Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 550, which features GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 512 SPUs, 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 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (202%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon RX 550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 13312 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (approximately 48%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (approximately 32%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 550, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (32%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.