Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (1000%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 371200 (2900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be much (about 3233%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155200 (3233%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is quite a bit (more or less 2567%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61600 (2567%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.