Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is superior to the Radeon R7 M260X, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (82%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.