Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 5750 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5750 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 720(144x5) SPUs as well as 36 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 5750 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5750 512MB		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70528 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be a bit (approximately 5%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5750 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 512MB		25200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 136%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5750 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 512MB		11200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (136%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 get to the max fill rate.