Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380 2G should be 19% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, 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 is a lot (about 60%) better 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 should be just a bit (about 14%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5870, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.