Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (more or less 140%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42000 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (more or less 140%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (140%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.