Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 M260, which has a core clock speed of 715 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 M260 should be 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be quite a bit (about 95%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8360 (95%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be much (more or less 30%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (30%)

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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.