Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 172800 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (more or less 263%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78800 (263%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (127%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.