Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (approximately 167%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (167%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.