Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which has GPU clock speed of 730 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (253%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be a little bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot (more or less 112%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 240, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (112%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.