Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a little bit (about 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a bit (about 18%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.