Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1150 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250 is 2% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 should be a lot (about 94%) better at texture filtering 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.