Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be 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 is much (about 559%) better at texture 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is the winner, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.