Radeon R5 M255 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R5 M255 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 304000 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be much (more or less 649%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122000 (649%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the Radeon R5 M255, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43680 (581%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.