Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (713%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (about 600%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (600%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (about 300%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5550, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (300%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.