Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 260X should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 46400 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be quite a bit (about 397%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49200 (397%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (about 42%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.