Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 100% quicker than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72128 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB will be a lot (about 52%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (65%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.