Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7990, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 187 Watts (99%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7990 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 422400 (275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 should be much (more or less 258%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 175200 (258%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is much (more or less 124%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (124%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.