Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (approximately 127%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38000 (127%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (127%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the max fill rate.