Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with GPU core speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M390X is 39% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be much (approximately 208%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62544 (208%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is much (approximately 93%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11136 (93%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.