Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X should be 588% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 75200 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (about 950%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45600 (950%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (500%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.