Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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 perform a little 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 a lot (about 105%) better at 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 using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is the winner, by far. (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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.