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Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 4350

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB comes with a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM runs at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4350, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 575 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 500 MHz on this specific model. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (382%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4350 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (800%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be much (approximately 170%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (170%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10100 (439%)

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

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Radeon HD 3870 1GB

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Radeon HD 4350

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	Radeon HD 3870 1GB	Radeon HD 4350
Manufacturer	AMD	AMD
Year	Nov 19, 2007	Sep 30, 2008
Code Name	RV670 XT	RV710
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	775 MHz	575 MHz
Memory Speed	2250 MHz	1000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	106 watts	22 watts
Bandwidth	72000 MB/sec	8000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	12400 Mtexels/sec	4600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	12400 Mpixels/sec	2300 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	320(64x5)	80(16x5)
Texture Mapping Units	16	8
Render Output Units	16	4
Bus Type	GDDR4	DDR2
Bus Width	256-bit	64-bit
Fab Process	55 nm	55 nm
Transistors	(Unknown) million	242 million
Bus	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x	PCIe 2.0 x16, PCI
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

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