Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4790, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (about 221%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (221%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is a lot (about 83%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4790, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (83%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.