Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M395X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 32896 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be a lot (approximately 85%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42544 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be just a bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3136 (16%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.