Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which has GPU core speed of 975 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 184 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 is 43% faster than the Radeon R7 370 4G in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (approximately 272%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 169600 (272%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 197%) better at AA than the Radeon R7 370 4G, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61600 (197%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.