Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

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

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a lot superior to 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 will be much (more or less 559%) better at anisotropic filtering 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

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (more or less 140%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes 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 speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.