Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1625 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20800 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be much (approximately 54%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (10%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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.