Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit (about 80%) better at texture 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.