Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (75%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (more or less 317%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (317%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (233%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.