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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 144128 MB/sec
Difference: 95872 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit (approximately 239%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 63200 (239%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 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 1GB

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 1GB Radeon HD 7950
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jan 28, 2008 January 2012
Code Name R680 Tahiti Pro
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 1536 MB
Core Speed 825 MHz (x2) 800 MHz
Memory Speed 2252 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 144128 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 GDDR4 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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

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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