Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 38%) better at AF than the Radeon RX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23440 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10720 (61%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 applied in one second. This number 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.