Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270X should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (approximately 167%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (167%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 processed in one second. This figure 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.