Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be just a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is much (about 105%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (more or less 47%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its 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 the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.