Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X will be 182% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 115648 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (approximately 220%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55000 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (220%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.