Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 will be 7% quicker than the Radeon R9 M380 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be a lot (about 108%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (108%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (67%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 processed per second.

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