Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 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, in theory, should perform 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 should be much (about 80%) more effective 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

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (approximately 80%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.