Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 1090 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (292%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (more or less 280%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 170960 (280%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (about 432%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 460 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75360 (432%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.