Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 730 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (733%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 98304 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be a lot (more or less 242%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35400 (242%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be much (about 242%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 240, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14160 (242%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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