Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which has a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G is 2900% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 371200 (2900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is much (approximately 1718%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 151200 (1718%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be quite a bit (approximately 1355%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59600 (1355%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.