Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be just a bit (about 16%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1712 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1712 (16%)

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 moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.