Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon R7 250 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a lot (more or less 230%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R7 250, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (230%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.