Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 240, which has a clock frequency of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory 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 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 240 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be a lot (about 105%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15400 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is superior to the Radeon R7 240, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6160 (105%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.