Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (about 1317%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63200 (1317%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (1033%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.