Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with GPU core speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R5 M230 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 will be quite a bit (more or less 225%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (225%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 is much (about 30%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 720 (30%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.