Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 550, which has a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 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 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon RX 550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 512 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 should be a little bit (approximately 17%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is a lot (about 47%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure 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 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.