Radeon HD 4550 512MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 940 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R5 M255 will be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 4550 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (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%) faster with regards to AF 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 running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M255 is superior to the Radeon HD 4550 512MB, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.