Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which features a clock speed of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 12 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 590 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is much (approximately 253%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 151536 (253%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be a lot (approximately 96%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (96%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.