Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with core clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 480		13349 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 10479 (365%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 480 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 127744 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be quite a bit (approximately 220%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 110880 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7040 (24%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.