Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4770, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 1792 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 will be a lot (more or less 125%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.