Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which has clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be quite a bit better 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 318%) more effective at AF 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 is quite a bit (about 199%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.