Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be much (about 352%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43600 (352%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be much (about 29%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (29%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.