Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460, which has core clock speeds of 1090 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon RX 460 overall. (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 little bit (more or less 17%) more effective at AF 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 a lot (more or less 33%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 460, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.