Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which features GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M385X should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 32448 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is quite a bit (about 146%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36600 (146%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (76%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's 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 memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.