Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at AA, and be capable of handling the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.