Radeon R5 M255 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X should be 1900% quicker than the Radeon R5 M255 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (about 649%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122000 (649%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the Radeon R5 M255, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.