Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (1000%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 371200 (2900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (approximately 3233%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155200 (3233%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (about 2567%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61600 (2567%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per 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 number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.