Radeon HD 4650 1GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 1GB		55 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (355%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4650 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 265600 (1186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (approximately 467%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89600 (467%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the Radeon HD 4650 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (467%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.