Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which features a core clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 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 470 4GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 470 4GB should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (83%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB should be quite a bit (about 295%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88528 (295%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 4GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17632 (147%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill 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 max fill rate.