Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which features GPU core speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (more or less 344%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42640 (344%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15120 (122%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant 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.