Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5570, which has core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (249%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5570 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be quite a bit (about 131%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (131%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.