Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which features GPU clock speed of 926 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1650 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 470 4GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (65%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB should be quite a bit (approximately 127%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66328 (127%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 4GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6432 (28%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.