Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 52096 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 60%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (approximately 60%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (60%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.