ATI FireGL X3-256 vs Radeon HD 6870

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	595	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.93	no data
Power efficiency	2.65	no data
Architecture	TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)	R400 (2004−2008)
GPU code name	Barts	R420
Market segment	Desktop	Workstation
Design	reference	no data
Release date	21 October 2010 (14 years ago)	3 August 2004 (20 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$239	$1,099

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	1120	no data
Core clock speed	no data	491 MHz
Boost clock speed	900 MHz	no data
Number of transistors	1,700 million	160 million
Manufacturing process technology	40 nm	130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	151 Watt	57 Watt
Texture fill rate	50.40	5.892
Floating-point processing power	2.016 TFLOPS	no data
ROPs	32	12
TMUs	56	12

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Bus support	PCIe 2.0 x16	no data
Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	AGP 8x
Length	220 mm	no data
Width	2-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	2x 6-pin	1x Molex

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	256 MB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory clock speed	1050 MHz	454 MHz
Memory bandwidth	134.4 GB/s	29.06 GB/s
Shared memory	-	-

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort	2x DVI, 1x S-Video
Eyefinity	+	-
HDMI	+	-

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

CrossFire

+

-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	DirectX® 11	9.0b (9_2)
Shader Model	5.0	no data
OpenGL	4.4	2.0
OpenCL	1.2	N/A
Vulkan	-	N/A

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	21 October 2010	3 August 2004
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	256 MB
Chip lithography	40 nm	130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	151 Watt	57 Watt

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