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Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB comes with core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform much 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 much (approximately 468%) more effective at anisotropic 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 is quite a bit (about 106%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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

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Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3870 512MB Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 December 2010
Code Name RV670 XT Cayman Pro
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 775 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 106 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 12400 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12400 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) 1408
Texture Mapping Units 16 88
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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