Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (about 718%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63200 (718%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit (more or less 555%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.