Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 10760 (375%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 580 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 127744 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be much (approximately 259%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 130608 (259%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11424 (40%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.