Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4550 256MB		25 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (about 1317%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63200 (1317%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (1033%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.