Radeon R5 M255 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R5 M255 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (more or less 262%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49200 (262%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (more or less 262%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M255, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19680 (262%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.