Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which features a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 17792 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB will be quite a bit (about 125%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4688 (78%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.