Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M385X will be 650% faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (more or less 600%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (600%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is superior to the Radeon HD 5550, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (300%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.