Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (approximately 248%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74496 (248%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (approximately 149%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17856 (149%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.