Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M295X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M295X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is quite a bit (about 140%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X should be a lot (more or less 50%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (50%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.