Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 28416 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (more or less 136%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29024 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (more or less 35%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (35%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.