Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which has a GPU core clock speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R5 M255 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 is a lot (more or less 292%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		4800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14000 (292%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M255 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4550 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.