Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 11200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be a lot (approximately 133%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution 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 R7 260X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.