Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 127%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38000 (127%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (approximately 127%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.