Radeon HD 4850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 90048 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (more or less 172%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43000 (172%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (172%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.