Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 460, which features a clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 460, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 is a lot (approximately 594%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52240 (594%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 460 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13040 (296%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.