Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1150 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 250 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 10048 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB is just a bit (about 4%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is superior to the Radeon R7 250, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (25%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels 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 number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.