Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 is 22% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 31872 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (approximately 220%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58080 (220%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a little bit (about 7%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1760 (7%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.