Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has a GPU core clock speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM running at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 3328 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (approximately 433%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 114400 (433%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.