Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1625 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (approximately 105%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (more or less 47%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.