Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon RX 5600

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5600, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1375 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 5600 should be 156% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600		294912 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 179712 (156%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5600 is a lot (about 487%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600		176000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 146000 (487%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5600 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600		88000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 76000 (633%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.