Compare any two graphics cards:
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870
IntroThe Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.
Display Graphs
Power Usage and Theoretical BenchmarksMemory BandwidthIn theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 33% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)
Texel RateThe Radeon HD 7870 should be much (more or less 203%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)
Pixel RateIf running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)
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
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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though. Specifications
Display Specifications
Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.
Display Prices
Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.
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