Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be a lot (approximately 69%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be much (approximately 69%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5450, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (69%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.