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Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB has clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB 106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 250 Watts
Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be 77% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 72000 MB/sec
Difference: 55104 (77%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a lot (approximately 303%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 12400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 37600 (303%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 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 1GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

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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 1GB Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 Nov 7, 2008
Code Name RV670 XT R700
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 775 MHz 625 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 2250 MHz 1986 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 106 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 72000 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 GDDR4 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

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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