Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (94%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is 29% quicker than the Radeon R9 270X overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (about 33%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (about 33%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (33%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.