Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is much (about 80%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.