Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 102 Watts (408%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (approximately 675%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (675%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (933%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.