Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be much (approximately 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.