Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1090 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 29% quicker than the Radeon RX 460 2GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32128 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB will be a lot (approximately 131%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34640 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8960 (51%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.