Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 is 11% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (more or less 70%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (106%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.