Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB is a lot (approximately 46%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be a lot (more or less 106%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5488 (106%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.