Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M385X should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 32448 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be much (more or less 146%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36600 (146%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.