Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 240, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 730 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should in theory 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 will be much (more or less 105%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is a better choice, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.