Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 is 3% quicker than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (more or less 31%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of 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 Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.