max485 sn75176
The circuit is basically OK. Dependending on cable length you should have 120 ohms parallel (A to B) termination at the receiver. The Slave to Master channel, that hasn't a transmitter enabled permanently, should have weak pullup/-down resistors to set the line level to defined idle state (A to VCC, B to GND). Additionally, you may use a combined full-duplex receiver/transmitter chip, e. g. TI SN65HVD3083E instead of two MAX485 or similar.
Regarding the original topic question, there are mainly differencs in speed and power consumption. My standard chip is SN75LBC176, that is fast (10 MBps) and also low power. Standard SN75176 has unpleasant high idle supply current, but is very cheap.