Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which features a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a lot (more or less 140%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42000 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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