Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 580 will be 106% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 135040 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be a lot (more or less 262%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 131008 (262%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be a lot (approximately 101%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20224 (101%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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