Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 550, which features a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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 little 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 will be much (approximately 48%) faster with regards to AF 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 quite a bit (about 32%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 550, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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