Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 will be 154% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be quite a bit (more or less 214%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.