Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 512MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M275X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be a lot (more or less 650%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (650%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is a lot (approximately 500%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (500%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.