Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon RX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB will be a lot (more or less 131%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34640 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8960 (51%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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