Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which has core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270X should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a bit (approximately 18%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5870, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.