Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should perform quite a bit 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 will be a lot (more or less 317%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, and very much so. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 get to the max fill rate.