Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (about 468%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58000 (468%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be much (more or less 106%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (106%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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