Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which features core speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 0% faster than the Radeon RX 480 4GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 1024 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be quite a bit (more or less 169%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 101280 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is quite a bit (approximately 49%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11840 (49%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.