Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 360, which features GPU core speed of 1050 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 768 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 11% quicker than the Radeon R7 360 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 should be much (approximately 68%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 is quite a bit (about 40%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (40%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.