Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 460, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1090 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon RX 460		5595 points
	Difference: 795 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should perform much faster than the Radeon RX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 45%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon RX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27760 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (more or less 70%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon RX 460, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of 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.