Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (160%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 250 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (475%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 is quite a bit (approximately 400%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (400%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 will be much (approximately 233%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (233%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.