Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460, which features a core clock speed of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 should be a lot (approximately 131%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34640 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the Radeon RX 460, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8960 (51%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.