Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R9 M280X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (42%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (about 26%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 1GB is superior to the Radeon R9 M280X, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (11%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.