Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features core speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 M260X should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 26%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be a lot (approximately 52%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3400 (52%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 processed in one second.

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