Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon RX 560

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 560, which features core speeds of 1175 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon RX 560 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon RX 560		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 29440 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 560 is a lot (approximately 185%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 560		75200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48800 (185%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 40%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 560, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 560		18800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (40%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

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