Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (94%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 270X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (approximately 33%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (33%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.