Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be 36% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be much (approximately 24%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5024 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be much (about 24%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.