Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which features a core clock speed of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1650 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 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 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 470 4GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB is quite a bit (about 135%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68128 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB should be a bit (about 3%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 832 (3%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one 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 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.