Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has GPU core speed of 1120 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the Radeon RX 480 4GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 1024 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be a lot (more or less 169%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 101280 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be quite a bit (more or less 49%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11840 (49%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.