Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (more or less 105%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (approximately 47%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.