Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which features GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit 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 will be much (more or less 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 running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, by far. (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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.