Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (more or less 581%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72080 (581%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (about 127%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15760 (127%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.