Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon RX 6900 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1825 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific model. It features 5120 SPUs as well as 320 Texture Address Units and 128 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon RX 6900 XT		300 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (183%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6900 XT should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6900 XT		524288 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 466688 (810%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6900 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 4610%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 6900 XT		584000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 571600 (4610%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6900 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6900 XT		233600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 221200 (1784%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.