Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (about 372%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18112 (169%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.