Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 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 6770		108 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6770 should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 should be quite a bit (approximately 190%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (190%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 is a little bit (approximately 16%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (16%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.