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

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) should theoretically perform a little bit faster than 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) should be much (approximately 55%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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 should be a lot (about 94%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.