Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which has GPU core speed of 1717 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, 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 5500 XT		130 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 171776 (298%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is quite a bit (more or less 1119%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 138696 (1119%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42544 (343%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 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 get to the maximum fill rate.