Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 250X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 250X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be quite a bit (approximately 33%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be a lot (about 33%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (33%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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