Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6750

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6750, which has clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 720 SPUs as well as 36 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6750 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6750		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80128 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a bit (about 1%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6750. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6750		26100 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 300 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be much (approximately 128%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6750, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6750		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (128%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

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