Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260, which features core speeds of 715 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 M260 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be quite a bit (approximately 258%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12360 (258%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3320 (138%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.