Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has GPU clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is much (more or less 105%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.