Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which features core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (approximately 80%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be a lot (more or less 80%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (80%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.