Radeon HD 4550 256MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with GPU clock speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R5 M255 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 will be a lot (more or less 292%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14000 (292%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is quite a bit (approximately 213%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4550 256MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 256MB		2400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5120 (213%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.