Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 550, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon RX 550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 512 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 will be a bit (more or less 17%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 550 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.