Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5670, which comes with core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 400(80x5) SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5670 will be 21% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 should be a lot (approximately 45%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4812 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a lot (more or less 72%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4488 (72%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.