Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be a little bit (more or less 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a little bit (about 6%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5870, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.