Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be 84% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much (about 72%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8976 (72%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8976 (72%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.