Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (more or less 80%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (about 80%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (80%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.