Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1257 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 Stream Processors, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 580 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be much (about 202%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 121008 (202%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16224 (68%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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