Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 268800 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (more or less 433%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 130000 (433%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be quite a bit (about 433%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (433%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.