Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 M260X should be 1% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be much (more or less 26%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be a lot (more or less 52%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 M260X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3400 (52%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.