Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 295X2 is 178% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 409600 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (approximately 497%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 298336 (497%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be a lot (more or less 443%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 106304 (443%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

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