Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250X, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 250X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be quite a bit (more or less 33%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be a lot (about 33%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 amount 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 worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.