Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270X should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a small bit (about 18%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5870, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.