Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which features core speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 125% quicker than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80128 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is much (approximately 69%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (about 408%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.