Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which features a clock speed of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 470 4GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (65%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB will be quite a bit (approximately 127%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66328 (127%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 4GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6432 (28%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.