Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (approximately 135%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (more or less 135%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (135%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.