Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which comes with core speeds of 926 MHz on the GPU, and 1650 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 174 Watts (145%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be much better than the Radeon RX 470 4GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (about 96%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 470 4GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113472 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (about 213%) better at AA than the Radeon RX 470 4GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63168 (213%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.