Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115328 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a lot (approximately 69%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (408%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 reach the maximum fill rate.