Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 90048 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (about 172%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43000 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (about 172%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (172%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.