Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4770, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be 4% faster than the Radeon HD 4770 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 1792 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 is much (more or less 125%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1312 (12%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.