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

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1150 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 720(144x5) SPUs, 36 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

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

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a lot (approximately 136%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.