Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 559%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59712 (559%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (approximately 140%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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