Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 460, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1090 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon RX 460		5595 points
	Difference: 2630 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon RX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152000 (136%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (about 94%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57360 (94%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (70%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.