Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this specific model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6770		108 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6770 will be 27% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 14208 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 is a lot (more or less 237%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25312 (237%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of 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 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.