Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 204800 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (more or less 369%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 110800 (369%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (approximately 327%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (327%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.