Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 192896 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (more or less 156%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78000 (156%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (approximately 156%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (156%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could 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 Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.