Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M275X, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M275X should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be a lot (about 44%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is much (approximately 44%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.