Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with core clock speeds of 730 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 240 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be quite a bit (approximately 66%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5800 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be a lot (more or less 33%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (33%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.