Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M390X, which has core clock speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units 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 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X will be 1150% quicker than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be a lot (about 1828%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87744 (1828%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20736 (864%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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