Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit (approximately 113%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14000 (113%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14000 (113%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.