Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 590, which features a clock frequency of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 12 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 590, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 135040 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be quite a bit (more or less 323%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 161536 (323%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is quite a bit (about 135%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27008 (135%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.