Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 550, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 550 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57088 (99%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 should be quite a bit (more or less 184%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (184%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 550 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.