Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 115648 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (more or less 220%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55000 (220%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (approximately 220%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.