Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (600%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (approximately 833%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (833%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (approximately 433%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (433%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.