Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4550 256MB overall. (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 a lot (more or less 1317%) faster with regards to AF 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 using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.