Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M385X should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 32448 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be a lot (about 146%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36600 (146%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is quite a bit (more or less 76%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.