Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which has core speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB should be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB is quite a bit (more or less 26%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (138%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.