Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 926 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1650 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 470 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (83%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 should be a lot (about 295%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88528 (295%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17632 (147%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.