Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1090 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically perform a little bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15104 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB will be much (approximately 22%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11040 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (15%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.