Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M270X should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be a small bit (approximately 16%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M270X is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (16%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.