Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 240, which has a core clock speed of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 158 Watts (527%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be much (approximately 366%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53400 (366%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (approximately 366%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 240, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21360 (366%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high 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 number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 get to the max fill rate.