Radeon RX 480 4GB vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 590, which has a core clock frequency of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 12 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 590 should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon RX 480 4GB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 32768 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is much (more or less 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 480 4GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50256 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be a lot (about 31%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 480 4GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11168 (31%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.