Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (approximately 113%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (113%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (approximately 113%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27200 (113%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.