Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M390X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 32896 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be quite a bit (more or less 85%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42544 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be a bit (about 16%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3136 (16%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.