Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (292%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon RX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (more or less 280%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon RX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 170960 (280%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (more or less 432%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 460, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75360 (432%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.