Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M275X, which has a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M275X should be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X will be a lot (about 44%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M275X is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (44%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.