Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 240, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 730 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is quite a bit (about 105%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15400 (105%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be quite a bit (approximately 105%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R7 240, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6160 (105%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.