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Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

The Radeon HD 5870 has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM is set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 285, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 918 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870 188 Watts
Radeon R9 285 190 Watts
Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 285 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 285 176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 22400 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be much (approximately 51%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 285 102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 68000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 34816 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 285 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 285 29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 27200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2176 (8%)

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

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Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 285

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5870 Radeon R9 285
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 23, 2009 September 2014
Code Name Cypress XT Tonga PRO
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 850 MHz 918 MHz
Memory Speed 4800 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 188 watts 190 watts
Bandwidth 153600 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 68000 Mtexels/sec 102816 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 27200 Mpixels/sec 29376 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600(320x5) 1792
Texture Mapping Units 80 112
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 5000 million
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 12.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.2 OpenGL 4.4

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 285

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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