Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (approximately 68%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be a bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (20%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.