Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 speaking, the Radeon R9 270X will be 56% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (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 quite a bit (about 167%) faster with regards to 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

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (more or less 167%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it 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, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.