Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460, which features a core clock speed of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 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 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 will be quite a bit (about 103%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31040 (103%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 460 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (45%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure 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 video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.