Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare 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 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (426%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5450 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 1208%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62800 (1208%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24600 (946%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.