Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 480 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is a lot (approximately 55%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be much (approximately 94%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (94%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.