Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 52096 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (approximately 60%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (approximately 60%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on quite a few 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.