Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (292%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 is 129% faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (more or less 280%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon RX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 170960 (280%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.