Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6750 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 720 SPUs along with 36 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6750 1GB		86 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6750 1GB is 21% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 1GB should be a lot (approximately 144%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15412 (144%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 1GB is a little bit (about 9%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		11600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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, 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.