Radeon RX 550 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 590, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1469 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2304 Stream Processors, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 590 should be 129% faster than the Radeon RX 550 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 147456 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be a lot (about 501%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 176336 (501%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be a lot (about 167%) better at AA than the Radeon RX 550, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29408 (167%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.