Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 102272 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be quite a bit (approximately 223%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111280 (223%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 4GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15840 (79%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.