Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, by a large margin. (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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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