Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 550, which features a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 550 is 12% quicker than the Radeon HD 4790 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12288 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is much (approximately 83%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 should be much (more or less 83%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (83%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.