Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should theoretically be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should be much (approximately 55%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (55%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.