Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 M260X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X will be much (more or less 125%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (125%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X is a lot (more or less 50%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.