Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 380 2G should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (58%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (more or less 262%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78640 (262%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19040 (159%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.