Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features core speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 176448 (278%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (about 318%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.