Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5670, which has 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 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5670 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (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%) more effective at 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 will be much (about 72%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5670, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.