Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should perform a lot 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 will be quite a bit (more or less 167%) better at texture 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 running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by a large margin. (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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to the 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.