Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (more or less 372%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.