Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 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 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is much (approximately 55%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be much (more or less 94%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.