Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X will be 41% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 52096 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be much (about 60%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be quite a bit (approximately 60%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (60%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.