Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be 122% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (about 468%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58000 (468%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (approximately 106%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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 max fill rate.