Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which features a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 9216 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is much (about 24%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5024 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit (approximately 24%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5024 (24%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.