Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon RX 570

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 570, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1168 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon RX 570		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 570 will be 298% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 570		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 171776 (298%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 570 is a lot (approximately 1106%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 570		149504 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 137104 (1106%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 570 is quite a bit (approximately 201%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 570		37376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24976 (201%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.