Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon RX 560

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 560, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1175 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be a little bit superior to the Radeon RX 560 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 560		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 512 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 560 is much (approximately 185%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon RX 560		75200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48800 (185%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is quite a bit (about 40%) better at FSAA than the Radeon RX 560, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 560		18800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (40%)

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 past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.