Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 4G should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 118848 (187%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is much (approximately 335%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83640 (335%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G should be quite a bit (approximately 210%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past 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 RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.