Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a small bit (more or less 18%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, though not by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.