Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16128 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (approximately 70%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is much (more or less 106%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5830, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (106%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.