Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (about 559%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59712 (559%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14912 (140%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.