Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1625 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs 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 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be much (approximately 105%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of 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.