Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 590, which uses a 12 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 590 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be quite a bit (more or less 253%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 151536 (253%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is much (about 96%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (96%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip 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 Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 get to the max fill rate.