Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which has a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 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 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (292%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 203008 (383%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 2071%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 221312 (2071%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (about 768%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 82112 (768%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.