Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 470, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 926 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1650 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 470 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 is much (approximately 295%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.