Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M290X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 26496 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 36%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18000 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (more or less 36%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (36%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on quite a few 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.