Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 192000 (267%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (about 855%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 106000 (855%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (139%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.