Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 115648 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit (more or less 188%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47000 (188%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (188%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.