Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (131%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (more or less 172%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (more or less 70%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.