Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which comes with core clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs 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

The Radeon R9 380 2G should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (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%) more effective at texture 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is a better choice, but only just. (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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.