Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 460, which features a core 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 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should be 14% quicker than the Radeon RX 460 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 should be a small bit (more or less 17%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8840 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be quite a bit (about 33%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon RX 460, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5760 (33%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.