Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M395X should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a lot (about 208%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62544 (208%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be much (approximately 93%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.