Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 470, which has a clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1650 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 174 Watts (145%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 21% quicker than the Radeon RX 470 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (more or less 96%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113472 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 213%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 470, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63168 (213%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.