Radeon R5 M255 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 is 1900% faster than the Radeon R5 M255 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 304000 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (approximately 581%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109200 (581%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (approximately 581%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R5 M255, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43680 (581%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.