Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is 71% quicker than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is a lot (more or less 36%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be a lot (about 83%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (83%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported 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 type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 maximum fill rate.