Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 is quite a bit (approximately 237%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 will be quite a bit (about 35%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.