Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250X, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be quite a bit (about 223%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (223%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X will be much (approximately 29%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (29%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.