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

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which comes with clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390X 8G will be 433% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 312000 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is much (about 1390%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 172400 (1390%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54800 (442%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.