Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which features a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 239872 (166%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is much (more or less 600%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 158400 (600%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (155%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.