Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X is 44% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (about 397%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49200 (397%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be much (about 42%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.