Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. ATi has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 80%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be quite a bit (approximately 67%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.