Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation 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 speaking, the Radeon R9 290 will be 39% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (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 quite a bit (more or less 113%) faster with regards to AF 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 is a lot (more or less 113%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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