Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 55104 (77%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a lot (approximately 303%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37600 (303%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (61%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.