Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should be a lot (more or less 33%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X 2GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.