Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 550, which features a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 32 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 perform a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 550 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 512 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 is much (more or less 33%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is much (more or less 50%) better at FSAA than the Radeon RX 550, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.