Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a core clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 480 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 118016 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is a lot (more or less 511%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134880 (511%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9440 (36%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.