Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M395X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a lot (more or less 270%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67544 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be quite a bit (more or less 131%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across 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 type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.