Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 470, which comes with a core clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1650 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon RX 470 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (approximately 96%) better 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 is quite a bit (approximately 213%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon RX 470, and should be capable of handling higher screen 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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the 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 the card's 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 output rate is also dependant 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.