Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 263%) faster with regards to AF 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

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 127%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.