Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which has 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 176448 (278%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (approximately 318%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79496 (318%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19856 (199%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of 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.