Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be much (approximately 105%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory 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 is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 in a second.

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