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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a speed of 1126 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which features core speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 144128 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X 104000 MB/sec
Difference: 40128 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (approximately 133%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X 61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X 17600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 8800 (50%)

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

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon R7 260X

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB Radeon R7 260X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jan 28, 2008 October 2013
Code Name R680 Bonaire XTX
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 825 MHz (x2) 1100 MHz
Memory Speed 2252 MHz (x2) 6500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 115 watts
Bandwidth 144128 MB/sec 104000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 26400 Mtexels/sec 61600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 26400 Mpixels/sec 17600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) (x2) 896
Texture Mapping Units 16 (x2) 56
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 16
Bus Type GDDR4 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 128-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 2080 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16) PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R7 260X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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