Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit (about 248%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74496 (248%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.