Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

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

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) will be 21% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) will be much (more or less 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB is quite a bit (about 67%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4288 (67%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.