Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 6600

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6600, which comes with a clock speed of 1626 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6600 is 99% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 114176 (99%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 will be much (about 590%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600		182112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155712 (590%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 will be much (approximately 294%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600		104064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 77664 (294%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.