Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which has a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390X 8G, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit (more or less 516%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 154800 (516%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 55200 (460%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.