Radeon R9 M290X vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 550, which comes with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X is 34% quicker than the Radeon RX 550 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 38912 (34%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (more or less 93%) better at AF than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (about 55%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 550, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (55%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.