Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory speed of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 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 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 51% quicker than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 17792 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB is quite a bit (about 125%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 78%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.