Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which comes with a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 380 4G overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (about 114%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 380 4G. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123360 (114%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 199%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380 4G, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61760 (199%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range 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 texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.