Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M385X should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X will be quite a bit (more or less 600%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (600%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (300%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus 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 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.