Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with clock speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M395X should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be quite a bit (about 208%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62544 (208%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a lot (about 93%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.