Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (131%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (more or less 172%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (about 70%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.