Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 970 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1425 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 380X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (about 87%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 380X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107840 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61760 (199%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.