Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features core clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 2G should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (1325%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (approximately 1135%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99840 (1135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be much (about 605%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26640 (605%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.