Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is 67% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 95872 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 239%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63200 (239%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be a small bit (approximately 3%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.