Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 860%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75680 (860%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 540%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23760 (540%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.