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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 features core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580 185 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 109 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 580 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5970 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580 262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Difference: 6144 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (approximately 28%) better at AF than the Radeon RX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 580 181008 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 50992 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (more or less 131%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon RX 580, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580 40224 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 52576 (131%)

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

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

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Radeon RX 580

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5970 Radeon RX 580
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 April 2017
Code Name Hemlock XT Polaris 20
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 8192 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 1257 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 8000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 185 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 262144 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 181008 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 40224 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 2304
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 144
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 14 nm
Transistors 2154 million 5700 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 12.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 580

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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