Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, 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 3850 X2 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a lot (about 72%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8976 (72%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8976 (72%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 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 max fill rate.