Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which features a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M270X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be a lot (more or less 230%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20200 (230%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M270X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (164%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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