Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 176448 (278%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (more or less 318%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79496 (318%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (more or less 199%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.