Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X is 149% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 107200 (149%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (about 545%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67600 (545%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be much (approximately 158%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (158%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.