Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 550, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be 0% quicker than the Radeon RX 550 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 512 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 should be a little bit (more or less 17%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 should be much (about 47%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.