Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (approximately 214%) more effective at AF 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.