Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460, which features a clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (292%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 is 129% quicker than the Radeon RX 460 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (approximately 280%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 170960 (280%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (more or less 432%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon RX 460, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75360 (432%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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