Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be 2150% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (more or less 1136%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1136%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 are applied 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.