Radeon HD 4650 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 1GB		55 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (586%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 254%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48800 (254%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon HD 4650 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (467%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.