Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be 2150% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (approximately 2167%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104000 (2167%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (about 1033%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (1033%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.