Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 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 R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (620%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X is 1300% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (about 1567%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (1567%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (approximately 1233%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (1233%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.