Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with clock speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M390X should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be quite a bit (approximately 270%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67544 (270%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13136 (131%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.