Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260, which features a clock speed of 715 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 M260 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 is quite a bit (more or less 95%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8360 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (30%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.