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Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB 106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 250 Watts
Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB 57600 MB/sec
Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (approximately 303%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB 12400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 37600 (303%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is much (about 61%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB 12400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 7600 (61%)

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

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Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3870 512MB Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 Nov 7, 2008
Code Name RV670 XT R700
Memory 512 MB 512 MB (x2)
Core Speed 775 MHz 625 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 1986 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 106 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate 12400 Mtexels/sec 50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12400 Mpixels/sec 20000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) 800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 16 40 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 55 nm 55 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 956 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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