Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 580, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 RX 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 10760 (375%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 580 should be 95% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 127744 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be a lot (approximately 259%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 130608 (259%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11424 (40%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.