Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1150 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 250 should be 16% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 10048 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be just a bit (about 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 25%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (25%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.