Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6750

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6750, which features GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 720 SPUs, 36 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 6750		86 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6750 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6750		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 should be much (approximately 110%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13700 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6750		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.