Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5770, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5770 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 will be much (approximately 174%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (174%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 will be a little bit (about 10%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (10%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.