Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (360%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (713%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (more or less 1183%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (1183%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (more or less 633%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (633%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.