Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M270X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (113%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (more or less 90%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26040 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15920 (137%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.