Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (131%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (approximately 172%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (172%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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