Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has core speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon RX 480 4GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 1024 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be much (about 169%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 101280 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a lot (about 49%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11840 (49%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.