Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 R9 M270X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be just a bit (approximately 3%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (3%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.