Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 115648 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (about 188%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47000 (188%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.