Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which has core speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is much (more or less 52%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a lot (more or less 82%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.