Radeon R5 M255 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon R5 M255 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (450%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a lot (more or less 168%) better at AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (168%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (about 91%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M255, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6880 (91%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 card 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.