Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M395X should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 96448 (152%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a lot (about 270%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67544 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be a lot (about 131%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13136 (131%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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