Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 250X 2GB should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB will be a lot (approximately 60%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB is quite a bit (about 60%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (60%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.