Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should be 154% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (about 372%) faster with regards to AF 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

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (approximately 169%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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