Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is 77% faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 55104 (77%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is much (approximately 72%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21000 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (more or less 72%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (72%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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