Radeon HD 4650 512MB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1020%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (about 275%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (275%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (500%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated 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 memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.