Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M270X, which has GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 62400 (87%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (approximately 74%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21400 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (about 148%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (148%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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