Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5670, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 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 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 5670 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 should be quite a bit (about 25%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3100 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 100%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5670, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (100%)

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 (in units of megabytes 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 the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.