Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380X, which comes with a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380X should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (58%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be quite a bit (more or less 314%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94160 (314%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19040 (159%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated 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 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.