Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 590, which has GPU clock speed of 1469 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 590 should be 14% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general, because of its higher data rate. (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 a lot (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 will be much (approximately 96%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.