Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which comes with a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 114176 (99%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be much (approximately 511%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134880 (511%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be quite a bit (approximately 36%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.