Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 235 Watts (204%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 122% quicker than the Radeon R7 260X overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 126400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be a bit (approximately 3%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 36%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 260X, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (36%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.