Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which features a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 480 SPUs, 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 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 46%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5488 (106%)

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: Memory 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. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.