Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480, which features a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 480 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 118016 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be much (approximately 511%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134880 (511%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9440 (36%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.