Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X is 150% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 172800 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (more or less 263%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78800 (263%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (approximately 127%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (127%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.