Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M395X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M395X, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be quite a bit (more or less 270%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67544 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be much (approximately 131%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 fill 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.