Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be 60% faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB is quite a bit (more or less 52%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a lot (more or less 65%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (65%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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