Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 550, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 512 Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 550 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12288 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is quite a bit (about 83%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is quite a bit (about 83%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (83%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at 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 video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.