Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be much better 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 will be quite a bit (approximately 467%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.