Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1425 MHz on this model. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 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 R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 2G should be 19% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be quite a bit (approximately 60%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is a little bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.