Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory 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 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 90048 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (about 172%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43000 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (approximately 172%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.