Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which features core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 22016 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is a lot (more or less 74%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15824 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is just a bit (about 16%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3424 (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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.