Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6750 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It 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 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6750 1GB		86 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6750 1GB should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 1GB should be quite a bit (about 144%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15412 (144%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 1GB will be just a bit (approximately 9%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		11600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 912 (9%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.