Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed 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 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X will be 353% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 224448 (353%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (about 335%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83800 (335%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 172%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (172%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.