Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be 60% faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a small bit (more or less 3%) faster with regards to 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 using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the winner, though only just barely. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.