Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 250X should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X is quite a bit (about 60%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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.