Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 975 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 78 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 370 4G should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a bit (more or less 9%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 370 4G is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (15%)

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: Bandwidth is the max 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 card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.