Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be 100% quicker than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 26%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is much (approximately 138%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (138%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.