Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M275X should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X will be quite a bit (approximately 44%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M275X is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (44%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in a second.

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