Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 250X 2GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 355%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (355%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should be much (more or less 264%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5550, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.