Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a GPU core clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 is 154% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (approximately 214%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a lot (about 26%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2752 (26%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.