Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 480 4GB will be 80% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 102272 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a lot (approximately 223%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111280 (223%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be much (approximately 79%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15840 (79%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.