Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which features GPU core speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X will be 39% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be much (more or less 208%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62544 (208%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be quite a bit (approximately 93%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11136 (93%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one 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. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.