Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (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 quite a bit (more or less 545%) faster with regards to AF 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

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number 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 video card will be at 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 card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 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 get to the max fill rate.