Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which features a GPU core clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (92%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (about 161%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64496 (161%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13856 (87%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.