Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 926 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1650 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 470 4GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB is quite a bit (more or less 98%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58528 (98%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB will be a lot (more or less 23%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5632 (23%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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