Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 46400 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (more or less 397%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49200 (397%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be much (approximately 42%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.