Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should be a lot (about 33%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (33%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.