Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 60%) more effective at texture 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, by a large margin. (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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.