Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R5 M230, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 780 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R5 M230 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be much (approximately 77%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (41%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.