Radeon HD 4850 vs Radeon R9 280

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon R9 280, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 4850 stacks up against Radeon R9 280, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 4850 Radeon R9 280
Power consumption (TDP) 110 Watt 200 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1x 6-pin 1 x 6-pin + 1 x 8-pin
Memory type GDDR3 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 512 MB 3 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x S-Video 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon R9 280 has 81% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 4850.
  • Radeon HD 4850 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon R9 280 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon HD 4850 has 509 GB more memory, than Radeon R9 280.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 4850 is build with Terascale 1 architecture, and Radeon R9 280 - with GCN 1.0.
  • Radeon HD 4850 is manufactured by 55 nm process technology, and Radeon R9 280 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Radeon R9 280 is 29 mm longer, than Radeon HD 4850.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon R9 280 is 257 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 4850.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 1−2 35−40
ultra / 1080p 0−1 21−24
QHD / 1440p 0−1 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 12−14 60−65
medium / 1080p 3−4 40−45
The average gaming FPS of Radeon R9 280 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 683% more, than Radeon HD 4850.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 4850 Radeon R9 280
Architecture Terascale 1 GCN 1.0
Code name RV770 Tahiti
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 25 June 2008 4 March 2014
Pipelines 800 1792
Core clock speed 625 MHz
Boost Clock 933 MHz
Transistor count 956 million 4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology 55 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 25.00 104.5
Floating-point performance 1,000.0 gflops 3,344 gflops
Length 246 mm 275 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 384 Bit
Memory clock speed 993 MHz 1250 MHz
Memory bandwidth 63.55 GB/s 240 GB/s
DirectX 10.1 (10_1)
Shader Model 4.1 5.1
OpenGL 3.3 4.6
OpenCL 1.1 1.2
Vulkan N/A +
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 3.0
HDMI +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 408 Mh/s
Eyefinity +
HD3D +
TrueAudio +
Design reference
CrossFire +
DDMA audio +
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 21.5 Mh/s
LiquidVR +
TressFX +
UVD +
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