Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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

The Radeon R9 270X should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (approximately 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 much (approximately 167%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.