Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which features core speeds of 1090 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon RX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152000 (136%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (about 94%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57360 (94%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (more or less 70%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 460 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (70%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.