Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 2G will be 58% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be much (approximately 262%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.