Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which features a clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M385X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be a lot (about 146%) better at anisotropic 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

The Radeon R9 M385X should be a lot (about 76%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.