Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which features clock speeds of 1469 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 590 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108544 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is a lot (about 164%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 131536 (164%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 590 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15008 (47%)

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 past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.