Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 15872 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 167%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is just a bit (approximately 3%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (3%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.