Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is much (approximately 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 313%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (313%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.