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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB comes with a GPU clock speed of 825 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory runs at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X 179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 144128 MB/sec
Difference: 35072 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (approximately 203%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X 80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 53600 (203%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X 32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5600 (21%)

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 R9 270X

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 R9 270X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jan 28, 2008 October 2013
Code Name R680 Curacao XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 825 MHz (x2) 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 2252 MHz (x2) 5600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 180 watts
Bandwidth 144128 MB/sec 179200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 26400 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 26400 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) (x2) 1280
Texture Mapping Units 16 (x2) 80
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR4 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 2800 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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 270X

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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