Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M270X will be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be a bit (approximately 16%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be a small bit (about 16%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.