Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M230, which has GPU core speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon R5 M230 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 214400 (1340%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot (approximately 285%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44400 (285%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (about 669%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M230, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20880 (669%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.