Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which features core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 14208 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is much (about 237%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25312 (237%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3712 (35%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.