Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1625 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 260X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (more or less 600%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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