Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which features GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 270 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a little bit (about 20%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a little bit (about 20%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (20%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.