Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be much (more or less 70%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (106%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.