Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M295X should be 177% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 112448 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be quite a bit (approximately 284%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71000 (284%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M295X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14000 (140%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.