Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be a lot (more or less 239%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		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 (about 3%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.