Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (181%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (about 467%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89600 (467%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (approximately 183%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (183%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.