Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 5750 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5750 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 720(144x5) SPUs as well as 36 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5750 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5750 512MB		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70528 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a small bit (about 5%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5750 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 512MB		25200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 512MB		11200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (136%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.