Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which features core clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 12% faster than the Radeon RX 480 4GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 26624 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (more or less 44%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 480 4GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70720 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (approximately 159%) better at FSAA than the Radeon RX 480 4GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56960 (159%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.