Radeon HD 4890 1GB 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 uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 580 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 137344 (110%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is a lot (more or less 353%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 141008 (353%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is much (about 151%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24224 (151%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.