Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380 2G will be 187% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 118848 (187%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is a lot (about 335%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83640 (335%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be a lot (about 210%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21040 (210%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.