Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 380 2G should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is quite a bit (more or less 60%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (14%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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