Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which features a core clock speed of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up 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 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB is a lot (approximately 21%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10640 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11360 (65%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen 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 amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.