Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 will be 182% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be much (about 188%) better at anisotropic 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

The Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit (more or less 188%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.