Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 122% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (approximately 261%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (261%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be just a bit (about 3%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (3%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 reach the max fill rate.