Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features 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 1GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 172800 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 263%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78800 (263%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (about 127%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.