Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1150 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 250 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 will be quite a bit (approximately 94%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (94%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (55%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.