Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115328 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (about 69%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a lot (approximately 408%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (408%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.