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Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB features clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should be 108% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be a lot (more or less 239%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 63200 (239%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a bit (more or less 3%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 800 (3%)

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

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7950

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB Radeon HD 7950
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jan 28, 2008 January 2012
Code Name R680 Tahiti Pro
Memory 512 MB (x2) 1536 MB
Core Speed 825 MHz (x2) 800 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 26400 Mtexels/sec 89600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 26400 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) (x2) 1792
Texture Mapping Units 16 (x2) 112
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 384-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16) PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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