Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460, which comes with core speeds of 1090 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 is quite a bit (about 103%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31040 (103%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 460 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (45%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.