Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G is 150% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be much (approximately 135%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be quite a bit (more or less 135%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5870, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (135%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.