Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a lot (approximately 38%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (about 313%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (313%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.