Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which has core speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M385X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 32448 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X will be much (about 146%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36600 (146%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (76%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.