Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 460, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1090 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 113 Watts (151%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon RX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a little bit (more or less 11%) better at AF than the Radeon RX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9760 (56%)

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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.