Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a core clock frequency 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 HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X will be 182% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 115648 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 220%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55000 (220%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (more or less 220%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (220%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.