Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with core speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X is 152% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be much (approximately 270%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67544 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a lot (more or less 131%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.