Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 123008 (232%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (about 690%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73792 (690%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (about 163%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17472 (163%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.