Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 470, which features clock speeds of 926 MHz on the GPU, and 1650 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 470 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (83%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 is a lot (more or less 349%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92128 (349%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 should be a bit (about 12%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3232 (12%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.