Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 250, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 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 is 16% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, because of its greater 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 is just a bit (more or less 4%) better at AF 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 is quite a bit (approximately 25%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 are processed in one second. This number 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 maximum fill rate.