Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 460, which comes with a clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 will be much (more or less 103%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31040 (103%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 460 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (45%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.